Soldiers' record, 1870-02-26

              ONE FLAG, ONE LAND, ONE EEABT, ONE HAND, ONE NATION, EVERMORE I
YOL. II. HARTEORD, OOOT., SATURDAY, EEBRUARY 26, 1870. ^O. 34.
.joira at Ijomc.
W E A R I N E S S .
O litfclo feot! that sucli long years
Must waurlcr on tlirougli hopes and fears,
Must ache and bleed beneath your load;
I, nearer to the wayside inn
Wliere toil shall eeaso and rest begin,
Am Aveary thinking of your road !
O little hands ! that "sveak or strong.
Have still to serve or rule so long,
Have sti-ll so long to give or ask;
I, who so mueh with book and pen
Have toiled among niy fellow men,
Am Aveary, thinking of your task !
O little hearts ! that throb and beat
Witli such impatient, feverish heat.
Such limitless and strong desires ;
Mine that so long has glowed aiid burned
With passions into ashes turned,
Now covers and conceals its tires.
O little souls! as pure and white
And crystalline as rays of light
Direct from heaA'en, their source divine;
Refracted through the mist of years,
How red my setting sun appears!
How lurid looks that soul of mine !
LONGE-ELLOW.
attempted problem. In my wildest flights ing hues from the glittering sides of a sort
From Putnam's Magazine.
T H A W E D P U T.
PART SECOND.
Katinka pouted a little at the rival di-version,
but managed the matter so im-partially
that I am to this moment in
doubt whether it was O'Shea's bunkommie
or my saxiorfaire she parted from most
reluctantly. Anyhow, she got a promise
of unlimited sable and ermine from each
of us ; and, with a misty farewell glance
from her sweet blue eyes, a hearty kiss
from Madame, and a heartier chorus of
barks from the canines, we scampered off.
I do not mean to bore you with the de-tails
of our journey ; and, indeed, I do not
• know that I could do so if I would. It
seems, to look back upon, a mei-e dizzy
whirl of dogs, and snow, and carte blanche
below zero in the day-time, and smoke,
and naked Indiaus, and cai-te blanche a-bove,
in the native huts, at night.
My companions boasted hugely of their
hunting spoils ; but I proved such an in-different
marksman, that Katinka's pros-pects
began to look slim ; and, besides, I
was really so wholly bent upon bagging a
primeval elephant, that I had very little
enthusiasm to spare for lesser and more
modern game.
So, runiiiiig the gauntlet of smoke and
snow, frost and fire, Heym acd Loke—as
the old Moosemen put it—we came at
last to the dreary shores of the Northern
Ocean, and crossed, upon the perilous
bridge of the ice-pack, to some adjacent
islands which were said to be a mere con-glomerate
of ice, saud, rocks, and lossils.
A grim and grewsome place enough it
looked—the island where wo landed—to
have been the cemetery of Antcdiluvia.
But my companions, who seemed, some
how, to the manner born, appeared to think
it all jolly as tieed be, built us a cluster of
snow-huts in regular Esquimaux fashion,
and set about their explorations as gayly
as it' it had been hen's nests, instead of
graves, they were hunting
And, truly, they recked vejy little, I
think, of Antedlluvia; for no sooner did
they scent the seals and walrus in the open
water to the westward, than they all scam-pered
olf thither, and left O'Shea and me
to our solitary investigations.
Very solitary, and very futile, too, they
seemed at first. There were traces of
fossils, indeed, scattered here and there ;
and even an occasional tusk, in a tolerable
state of preservation; but I cared nothing
for these. I had set my heart, with wliat
seemed, even to myself, an utterly absurd
and insensate longing, upon a wliole ele-phant—
body as well as bones, skin, hair,
llesh, and all—such as I had been told
had once floated up upon tlie shores of
the White Sea, and been devoured—a
savory and well-mellowed morsel—by the
dogs of that favored clime.
What I should have done with the ani-mal
if I had found him—for, reader, I did
not find him—remains to this hour an un-of
fancy—and never lover dreamed of his
mistress more diligently and persevering-ly—
I never got beyond the vision of him
stretched out in revered and colossal ma-jesty
before my longing eyes.
And so, while my merry companions
slaughtered the seals, and fought valiant
battles which thewalri (I wonder if that
is the orthodox plural), I wandered up
and down among the ice-clifls with poor,
patient, bewildered O'Shea at my heels, a
regular Yankee "questing beast," seek-ing
and seeking that blessed old elephant.
Fearful, dizzy, wearing work it was,
clambering about in the twilight gloom of
the gathering Arctic night, scaling the
cliffs and exploring the vast glcomy cav-erns
with which the island seemed to be
literally riddled through and through.
Into these last O'Shea ventured somewhat
relnct intly. He had the lingering, Irisli-peasant
belief in fairies and genii; and
one could scarcely blame him, for, indeed,
they looked uncanny enough by the flick-ering
light of our torches, to have been
the abode of gnomes and kobolds innu-merable.
Weird, awful places; grand
enough for cathedrals, gloomy enough for
catacombs. They would, 1 am sure, have
impressed even my unimpressible Yankee
imagination with a sense of terror, had
not the said imagination been already
crammed to repletion with elephants.
As it was, however, I only looked upon
them as probable lurking-places of my
favorite beast; and disregarding all warn-ings
and entreaties, plunged recklessly
into their deepest depths, and flung the
light of my inquisitive torch remorselessly
into their remotest corners, while poor
Patsey followed, faithful but trembling,
in my wake, holding up a toe of St. Greg-ory
Nazianzen, Katinka's parting gift, as
a charm to ward of the demons. It might,
perhaps, have comforted the dear old lad
to know that I had the blessed Ohry-sostom's
third right-hand finger-nail in
my breast pocket; but fearing to awaken
his jealously I did not tell him.
We had explored every nook and cran-ny
in the island, except one small cave
which I had reserved as a bonne bouc/ie,
of recess in the wall of ice which blocked
our further passage
"No, Pat," I answered, in a startled
shout, which echoed through the cavern
like the blast of a trumpet. "No, Pat,
he's noc a beast!"
We had entered the presence. We
had found HIM ; not an ichlhys of any kind,
dear Agassiz ; not elephas primigeniits, 0
wise Palarontologist ; not the elephant,
0 royal Public ; but--what ?
O'Shea made half-a-dozen ineffectual
cross-shaped lunges with St. Gregory's
toe; aud, failing to exorcise the appari-tion,
dropped his torch and fled incon-tinently
; while I sunk upon my kness
dumbfounded with awe and wonder before
the glorious vision which revealed itself
—the. colossal figure of a mem fully twelve
feet in height and magnificeiitly propor-tioned,
reclining, in an attitude of dream-less
slumber, npon a sort of couch or al-tar
of ice within the recess.
The ice had evidently once formed a
solid wall across the passage ; but from
some cause it had crumbled and melted
away until only a thin transparent film
covered the recumbent figure. The mas-yive
brow gleamed through it placid and
fair ; the full-fringed eyelids, \ h e manly
bronze upon the cheek, the long, fair hair
falling to the shoulders and mingling with
the golden beard upon the breast; the
shapely limbs, half hidden, half revealed
by some glittering garment of strange
stuff, showed "mockingly like life."
There was nothing sodden, nothing death-like
about the figure. It was not death,
but sleep, profound, dreamless, eternal,
perhaps, but lioing sleep.
And, being so, the feeling which it in-spired
was not terror, or even fear, but
simple soul-subduing awe and reverence
and wonder, such as a child might have
felt on first beholding a man, or a savage
on meeting a sage.
Kneeling tliere, the curtain of the ages
seemed to draw aside and reveal to me
the earth in its primeval glory, the race
in its pristine beauty and strengtii. Frag-ments
of old Scripture floating through
my brain, strange records-of the grand,
because from a projecting clift above the i di.m ^A .d amic tim• e.: , "And there were
entrance one could catch the last glimpse S^'^^^ts m the eartii in those days, mighty
of the retreating sun when he took his : which were of old, men of renown;'
final dip beneath the horizon. Upon this i speculations about Jabal, Juba , and
crag we stationed ourselves one queer lorefathers of agriculture,
November noon, and bathed our eyes in ' 5 ^ ^ again, the
the last ripple of the dying light, then i f!®' =
turned away—O'Shea, with a groan, and i, ® ^^^ own sight as grass-
I, it must be confessed, with a shiver, to ^^Wers, and so we were m their sight.'
finish our work. -How long I should have remained thus
Whether it was the feeling that the
dreadful Arctic night h;id fairly closed
down upon us in these dreary solitudes,
or wiiethcr it was something begotten by
the atmosphere of the place itself, I know
not; but I seemed to imbibe a modicum
of O'Shea's superstition at the very en-trance,
which deepened and strengthened
into absolute terror as we proceeded.
The cave was far smaller and less im-posing
than many we had visited, yet a
I know not, had not a sudden flickering
roused me to the fact that my torch was
going out. I picked up O'Shea's, lighted
it mechanically, and stumbled back
through the cavern like a man in a trance.
Half way to the ent'-ance I met Pat, pale
and haggard, a veritable Irish ghost. The
faithful fellow had gone out to the huts
for another torch and ventured back to
find me, in spite of his fears.
"Ah, thin ye're alive yet! God be
strange uncanny influence seemed to per- praised!" ho cried. "I was coming to
vade it, exalting and magnifying even its fetch ye. Bedad, I was afraid the janus
physical proportions. An awful statelinesa: would make 'way widye before this. Is
loomed in its gloomy arches, a weird he there yet?"
magnificence flashed out from its icy walls; "It's not a genius, O'Shea," I answered,
a solitude pregnant with preternatural, cooUy ; "it's a man."
presence brooded there, a silence instant "A man ! lie's as big as twelve !"
with solemn sound ; and as, with bated <-0f course ; he's an antediluvian," I
breath and hesitating :rea(J, we groped repUod, with the quietest assurance. Tlio
along, the conviction strengthened into big word and matter-of-fact luanner si-certainty
that we were approaching some lunced him, as I intended,
dread mystery ; or trampling with sacri-| "Now, i'ut," I added, "go and find
legions foot upon the hoary sanctity of Techulsisi and the rest, and toll them lo
either a temple or a tomb. bring a keg of rum and some blankets, and
O'Shea felt it, and brought his white all the peat and blubber they can spare "
face round close to mine: "rihure, Misthcr
Allen, there's something here. Is it the
elephant, think ? The saints preserve ua,
then, for he's not a beast!" As he spoke,
wo turned the sharp corner of a projecting
I'ock ; and the light of our torches flashed
back to us, reflecting in a thousand vary-
"Uoly Moses ! You're not going to burn
him!"
"No, Pat, I'm going to thaw him out,
that's all.'-'
iJe scampered oil readily enough ; glad,
I suspect, of an excuse for summoning
assistance ; and left me pacing up and
down before the entrance of the cave,
standing guard, as it were,over the mighty
sleeper within. I am not going to ana-lyze
my feelings for your benefit, dear
reader ; for I am not clear that I had any
feelings to analyze. I was conscious only
of an intense curiosity, and a resolute de-termination
to gratify it, if possible, at
whatever cost. I had espied a sort of rift
or crevice in the roof of the cave near the
recess, which I thought could be cleared
into a passable chimney. I meant to make
a fire there and thaw him out. That he
would wake to life agai)i, once he got
warm, absurd as the expectation seems,
I never doubted for an instant. He might
have been sleeping there for ages ; it cer-tainly
looked like i t ; but dead he was not.
Of that I was morally sure.
My recruits came in promptly, duly
armed and equipped ; the Russians slight-ly
demoralized by O'l'^hea's report, but
the Yankees full-primed, and double-shot-ted
with curiosity and interest. We held
a little council of war at the entrance,
and then went in to reconnoitre. I must
confess to putting up a counter petition
to O'Shea's devout prayer that we might
find the "janus" vanished in smoke and
brimstone. The whole thing seemed so
inciedible when viewed in any thing like
a business-like way, that I felt, in spite of
my senses, some doubts of its re.dity. But
no, we found him there, reposing in se-rene
majesty upon his chilly couch ; and
it even seemed to me that the film of ice
had grown thinner, and slumber more
life-like in the interim.
I was cool enough by this time to note
the effect of the strange sight upon my
companions. The Yankees took it witli
aboriginal sang froid ; the Russians wav-ered
a little, but rallied bravely ; and
O'Shea, after the mercurial fashion of his
race, even volunteered to play showmim ;
though 1 observed that the little velvet
bag which held Katinka's keepsake flour-risbed
rather conspicuously in the fore-ground.
We cleared out the crevice for a chim-ney,
and made a rousing fire of blubber
and dried peat, with such wood as we
could spare ;the Russians even sacrificing
one of their cherished sledge frames.
It was a picture to remember for a life-time
; the gloomy cavern lighted up into
weird splendor by the dancing flames, the
irregular arches and broken pillars stretch-ing
away into interminable vistas, peopled
with shadowy shapes ; the group of awed
and anxious faces ; each mutely question-ing
its neighbor; and that beautiful se-rene
Colossus lying there, dwarfing us all
into pigmies with his magnificent pi'opor-tions.
It was a trial of courage to touch him,
and so we watched aud waited till the
cavern steamed like a native hut, and the
ice-film vanished into mist; then I rose
and turned to my companions with a ges-ture
of mute appeal. They res()ondcd as
mutely; and silently, reverently, as those
who minister about the newly deaa, we
lifted him upon a couch of skins wo had
prepared, and set to work.
The garments dropped into impalpable
powder at a touch, and I looked to see
the whole form follow them ; but no, the
flesh was icy cold, indeed, but firm and
human-feeling ; the long fair hair and
golden heard silky and flexile as the tres-ses
of a woman.
One by one we tried all the accredited
Russian remedies—rubbing with snow,
douches of ice-water, rum, hot blankets,
artilicial respiration—aud one by one they
failed us. The flesh grew softer, the
muscles relaxed, the frost went out, as
O'Shea expressed i t ; but that was all.
One after another my comrades shook
their heads hopelessly and turned away.
What had inspired them all with the feel-ing
that he would come back to life again
I never knew. I had said nothing of my
own convictions in the mister, and yet
they evidently did expect it, and wore as